Oh my what a treat! Peacay over at the incomprable BibliOdyssey has posted a remarkable collection of Vincent Van Gogh's illustrated letters to his brother Theo. The letters and sketches offer a rare and fascinating glimpse into Van Gogh's thoughts about art, his own work and process as well as his observations of the world around him. The image above was accompanied by these reflections:
"Nature always begins by resisting the draughtsman, but he who truly takes it seriously doesn’t let himself be deterred by that resistance, on the contrary, it’s one more stimulus to go on fighting, and at bottom nature and an honest draughtsman see eye to eye. Nature is most certainly ‘intangible’, though, yet one must seize it, and with a firm hand.
And now, after spending some time wrestling and struggling with nature, it’s starting to become a bit more yielding and submissive, not that I’m there yet, no one is less inclined to think so than I, but things are beginning to go more smoothly. The struggle with nature sometimes resembles what Shakespeare calls ‘Taming the shrew’ (i.e. to conquer the opposition through perseverance). In many things, but more particularly in drawing, I think that delving deeply into something is better than letting it go.
I feel more and more as time goes on that figure drawing in particular is good, that it also works indirectly to the good of landscape drawing. If one draws a pollard willow as though it were a living being, which it actually is, then the surroundings follow more or less naturally, if only one has focused all one’s attention on that one tree and hasn’t rested until there was some life in it."
Stop by BibliOdyssey and give thanks to Peacay for putting together this remarkable post that allows us all to read the letters and linger over the beautiful sketches (be sure to click on the images to see larger versions.) This is certainly one arena where the internet offers an advantage over the museum exhibition.
